Victorian corset

October 27, 2016

Hello lovelies,

I caught a nasty cold and have been at home for almost two weeks now. The first week was so bad that I couldn't do anything really and was just on the bed or the sofa. I feel much better now but I have the feeling that my cough is getting worse. But whatever, I am at home and when I am not reading or sleeping in front of the TV I am hand sewing. Sewing with my sewing machine is a bit difficult because I then have to leave my warm sanctuary. My flat is an old flat and to keep the gas and electricity bill low we don't really heat much in winter. And it is getting cold in Vienna.

I started the Victorian corset ages ago and didn't finish it...until now. A few work in progress pictures were posted already but I started to use a new system for my blog. I will from now on only post one entry for one item I did. This will reduce the blog posts but it will also increase in quality.

So, onto the corset.

The corset pattern is from Laughing moon. It looks like this:

I used the Silverado bust corset because I already used the Dore and it doesn't work with my boobs. They get super squished and pushed upwards.

I cut everything in my size out of cotton for the inner fabric, strong linen for the middle fabric and a flimsy pink fabric for the outer fabric. I rue my decision for that pink fabric because it got all wrinkly and doesn't look good at all.

That's the linen. I ordered it a year ago from Sartor. I really like the shop, they have amazing fabric. And when I earn more, I really want to buy those beautiful historical replica silk fabric for 60€ per meter.

I inserted the busk and pinned everything together. By that time I really hated the pink material already.
By that time I realized I run out of eyelets so I had to wait and get some the next day.

In the end I didn't just by eyelets but also a few meters soft lace for the top.

I hammered in the eyelets and you can already see the wrinkles in the fabric. So sad.

I really liked the look of it. Okay, I like the look of everything with lace. There are no pictures of that but I used spiral steel boning. I bought it in a roll and cut the length I needed.

At this point I had to try on the corset and my body really looks like a hourglass. My hips are huge and with a corset they look even bigger.
There is a lace flower on the left side (right side in the mirror) because I hated how wrinkly the corset looked.

The only thing left to do was the binding. I sewed the front part with the sewing machine and the back part with my hand.

And with that done, the corset is finished. Hooray!

I like wearing corsets but I am not sure if I like doing corsets myself.

Time needed: probably a week but there were a few month between starting and finishing the corset.
Cost: ? ? ? No idea actually. I had the fabric at home and I only bought the busk, the eyelets and the lace.
Satisfaction: 2/5. The pink fabric ruins it for me. There are so many wrinkles.
Comfortable: 4/5. I made it a bit too small because I thought I would loose weight. Haha. Silly me.